When Longevity Upends Trusts

When long life upends trust assumptions.

Longevity has a way of upending estate planning. When New York City philanthropist Brooke Astor died in 2007 at age 105 with a $100 million fortune, a bitter dispute followed that saw her then 85-year-old son, Anthony Marshall, convicted and sentenced to prison for stealing from her in her later years.

While there were many tangled threads in the litigation over the Astor fortune, the advanced ages of mother and son were a sign of just how much demographics have changed how the wealthy can -- and should -- pass on their...